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No, there's the original trilogy, the prequels, and the "Oh, it was Palpatine the whole time. ...again. How original."
8 really ruined it. 7 had problems but I could forgive some of them because "Disney still trying to figure it out."
Then 8 happened. Closed off all story threads from 7 without any fanfare at all, and closed off all of its own potential threads within itself, leaving absolutely nothing for 9 to follow up on. Multiple character assassinations, and the entire Canto section could be deleted from the film and zero context would be lost.
9 was never going to succeed. It couldn't have. There was nothing for it to build on from 8.
What story threads? There were no story threads. There was hopeful fans who wanted to create things out of thin air. That's about it. There was more from 8 to lead off from than 7.
8 gets a lot of hate along with the rest of the sequels, and I remember being pissed off of its scorched earth treatment of every single plot point from 7 after watching it in the movie theatre, but looking back… at least it tried to be original. The scenes are visually memorable, and its message that even nobody can rise up to be a hero, is miles better than… whatever the 9 did with Rey.
I can't understand why people think it was original. It felt like the storylines from ESB and RoTJ were thrown into a blender.
Like when the they go with Benicio del Toro I initially thought "well he's going to betray them like Lando did". But then I thought "nah... that's too obvious" But nope, it didn't do anything new other than removing the point of Lando's plotline.
When Kylo Ren kill Snoke, it was just like Vader killing the Emperor.
I guess it's original because it's the only Star Wars movie where Luke Skywalker dies? Even then he faded away like Obi Wan did, but I guess because it's Luke Skywalker it's different somehow? Maybe because he cast an illusion spell before it happened? Like what's actually original in TLJ?
They had Andy Serkis playing a villain in a Star Wars movie. With basically a blank slate that they could do anything with. Instead, nothing.
There was a mystery about who Rey is. Could reveal something interesting there. Instead they went with she's related to nobodies. But nobodies that the First Order seemed to know about for some reason.
What was Luke looking for on that island? I guess nothing, he just went there to be a hermit or whatever.
Who are the Knights of Ren? Not even mentioned.
What did TLJ set up for the next movie? Rey and Kylo Ren fight? Rey and Kylo Ren kiss? Both of these things happen in RoS and it took like five minutes of screen time. Kylo Ren was the only villain left and there were maybe a couple dozen Resistance left at the end to TLJ. There wasn't much they could do other than bring back an old villain, Ian McDiarmid was available so... somehow Palpatine returned.
I actually respect RoS for not trying to give some bullshit explanation. It's just like "you like the Emperor, right?" Yup. "Well here he is. Darkside-cloning-whatever" Good enough for me! Now show him shooting lightning bolts! "Sure! BZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz!"
3/5 stars, because it showed Emperor Palpatine blast an X-Wing with lightning. RoS gave no fucks and I love it for that.
7 put Luke hiding on an island while a war was going on and left 8 to take the flak for explaining why. There was no way to make 8 without pissing people off.
Luke was one small puzzle piece of that shitpile
Then I don't understand. 8 developed Poe further by exploring the character arc for the daring overconfident pilot. Finn was given a reason to fight for the rebellion instead of trying to run away with Rey every 5 minutes. We got some absolutely great character development with Rey having a natural inclination to the dark side which builds on the fact she used the dark side to defeat Kylo in 7, and we use her as a lens to explore the "born special" trope in Star Wars, getting into more of her past history and getting satisfying answers.
Yeah Disney cheaping out on paying Mark Hamill for more than one movie (other than cameos) was probably the biggest problem with the ST. But TFA portrayed Luke Skywalker with a cameo better than TLJ which had him for a whole movie.
Sure Disney killing off the character that symbolizes hope to save money was always going to piss people off, but FFS at least give us one movie where Luke goes on an adventure to save the galaxy. And the ending where "it was all just illusion" made me think "well this movie sucked... he never even left that fucking island, but at least he's still alive so maybe he'll do something in the next one" then the movie is like "haha nope!" It was the most infuriating way to handle a studio mandated character death possible.
Luke using an illusion to save the rebellion was the best ending to the arc they established. He spends the whole movie angry that everyone is mythologising him and expecting him to be perfect. Then he uses his myth to trick the bad guys. If he'd showed up in person, he would have been giving in to the pressure to be this mythical figure. His arc would have been accepting that everyone who thinks Luke Skywalker is perfect is right. But instead, he uses the myth for shenanigans, which is a very much Luke-like thing to do.
It's all just Meta wankery to me. Like the writer is thinking "how do I portray this character has reached mythological levels in our culture? I know I'll make the movie about that! I'm so brilliant!" Fap fap fap
It's a "sir, this is a Wendy's" kind of thing. This is a Star Wars. Fun action adventure movie. Kind of movie kids wear costumes when they go see it. It's not that I don't understand the "Star Wars movies are an illusion, but if that illusion inspires children, that's what really matters!" message to it. And it's not that the message is wrong. It's just that it's obvious and boring.
It's fine to have this kind of wankery in a Knives Out kind of movie or whatever, but it's a Star Wars FFS. Pew pew pew voom voom. The challenge is to have a message in the subtext of a fun action adventure, not to spew out an obvious and shallow message overlayed on top of the action that's constantly telling the audience the movie isn't real. We know it's not real, but make a movie that lets us turn off our phones and pretend it's real for a few hours.
Star Wars is about Taoist philosophy. The following two movies are about how America's war on Vietnam is unjust, and the next three are about 9/11, which is really fucking clever because 9/11 hadn't even happened yet when the first one came out and George Lucas successfully predicted it. Star Wars has always been about high-minded philosophy and politics. Your comment rests on the assumption that Star Wars is mindless entertainment that never comments on the real world, but that's always been false.
And the ST is about Vladimir Putin working in the background before revealing that fascism has been there this whole time, we just didn't notice. Somehow fascism returned! An authoritarian with thousands of super weapons capable of destroying entire cities suddenly attacks out of nowhere and everyone in the world has to band together to help the resistance.
Putin's invasion of Ukraine didn't happen yet, but JJ Abrams predicted it! The JJ Abrams Star Wars movies were about high-minded philosophy and politics.
Your comment rests on the assumption that JJ Abrams movies are mindless entertainment that never comments on the real world, but that’s always been false.
Really though, the JJ Abrams movies have quite a lot to say about the emotional paths to fascism. From indoctrination to bad relationships with a father figure, the relationship to our ancestors, our need to restore a past empire. It's all there. The prequels are very dated, just immature shots being fired at a W. Bush and Newt Gingrich. The JJ Abrams movies explore the emotions that lead fascism, which will always be relevant.
Ever see the statue of a confederate general being removed? If you did, you'd see a reproduction of an evil guy that died a long time ago being moved around with a crane. What do you see at the beginning of RoS again? You might see it as mindless entertainment but there's a message there, it's just that JJ Abrams isn't spoon-feeding it to you.
Oh... soooooo say i've seen 8, but never got around to seeing 9... I should just chill and consider it done?
You should forget 7 or 8 ever existed and skip 9 completely.
This is the optimal solution.
I hadn't seen 9 for the longest time and just read online how stupid it was. Then I watched it with that expectation and yes, totally confirmed. If anything you might want to watch it to see what a dumpster fire it is. But don't prioritize it over other stuff you want to watch.
Except 9 isn't "so bad it's good," it's just bad. I would not recommend anyone watch episodes 7-9 at all.
I didn't say its so bad that its good. I said its a dumpster fire.
Yup I was just chiming in to clarify for any other Lemmy users who could have gotten the wrong impression. Episode 9 is a dumpster fire with no redeeming qualities and should be avoided at all costs
Yes probably. I forget if it had a single good scene.
If you think 7 is good you are a hopeless movie watcher, it set up nothing just typical jj abrams mystery boxes, is a straight up rehashing of A new hope and it did nothing of note. 8 tried to deviate from another shadowy mysterious bad guy aka Wish.com palpatine and do something different and it did it well.
And then 9 is a straight up piece of shit the only good part of it is the first montage with Kylo Ten being the boss and fucking shit up, they really dropped the ball by backpedaling from 8
I didn't say 7 was good, only that I was willing to be more forgiving since it was Disney's first Star Wars film.
8 did nothing well but destroy Star Wars at every turn. I would say because of what it did, I consider 9 to be better than 8. 9 could never have been good, and that is completely the fault of 8.
9 is a flaming piece of shit on every level. I think its even insulting to call it a movie given how fucking shit it is.
How can you say that 9 is better than 8 because 8 destoryed stuff (what exactly?) Meanwhile 9 literally destroys the whole OT and PT story arc of Anakin/Vader
RoS seemed consistent with the OT to me. Well Rey doesn't bring Palpatine back from the dark side (she doesn't even try) but that's because it's impossible to redeem someone who's dead. It's a contrast between the relationship to family and relationship to ancestors. Nice message about not being defined by our ancestors which children learning about the horrible things their ancestors did might connect with.
But other than that it's the same "destinies and prophecies are for suckers" as Star Wars has always been.
I'm just here to second the opinion that, while 7 was uninteresting, 8 basically destroyed Star Wars as a franchise, and that as imperfect as 9 is, it's practically a miracle that it was as good as it was with what it had to follow.
Episode 9 was the worst thing in existence, well would have been if not for Season 8 of GoT.
They had a proper face-off of who can make the worst fucking thing in existence
A pity they already had the entire EU to work from and decided to obliterate it all... until they fucked up their own shit so badly they started bringing it back.
We could have had another trilogy centered around an established strong female character.
Mara Jade.
Sure, mix and match in some new ideas to make it work better as films than novels. The idea of Finn (a defecting stormtrooper) absolutely works in this setting.
But the original cast is too old for that time period!
Well we've now seen that Luke can be portrayed reasonably well with another actor and face and voice changing tech.
Have a whole trilogy set in basically the Mando/Asoka time period, but use the Mandalorians in a more adult story about the difficulty of establishing and maintaining alliances when the New Republic is young, the Imperial Remnant still exists, and now basically its chaos as various factions are picking sides.
Thrawn can be the big bad, but his presence is barely hinted at in 7, makes his appearance in 8 and has a major victory, and is defeated in 9.
You could even work in Boba Fett and Asoka! Maybe Thrawn sends Fett to assassinate Luke in 8 and he is seriously wounded or his new gaggle of Jedi trainees are fucked up, but Asoka helps Luke fend him off on the Millennium Falcon!
But uh nope, instead we got A New Hope v2, A B and C plot clusterfuck with a side of break hyperspace and all space combat lore, followed by Duct Tape and Bullshit.
We could have had another trilogy centered around an established strong female character.
Mara Jade.
The character that could've broken the barrier against having older women do action would've been Princess Leia. And they were too gutless to have her do anything. She was in a coma for most of TLJ and hid in a bunker (too afraid to face her own son) for the rest of it. They say they make movies about strong women, but it's only if they're young. You can have older men do action, but they aren't going to have an older woman do action.
Excellent point, I totally agree.
We got a poorly written Holdo instead, closest thing to a strong older female character... I think she shoots a blaster... once?
Only older woman doing action in a recent major movie I can think of is Sarah Connor.
Brought back Ford for another Indi movies, that whole series with Liam Neeson, all of the Expendables movies, etc.
But yeah, the voice and face morph tech was basically available, they could have used Hamil and Fisher for the lines and most of the acting (you know, CGI and/or stunt doubles for the more intense action scenes same as basically every actor over 50 other than Tom Cruise), just maybe de age their voices and faces a tad to be set more proximally after 6, and focus more on her training, grand tragedy of her and han and Jacen becoming Caedus...
There is absolutely enough established lore there that could be worked into a trilogy focusing on the growth of Leia, showcasing a strong mother and warrior and diplomat/leader.
It is honestly completely baffling to me still that they threw out the EU. Sure, not all the plot lines are great, but they could have gone in so many directions with it.
I had always assumed the obvious problem with making a new trilogy would be:
Ok, we have so, so much established canon to work with, what parts of it can we focus on or interweave and tweak a bit to tell precisely the kind if story we want?
But nope, they just fucking binned it all.
Yeah maybe I'm just bitter because they advertised TLJ as "being about strong women" and it made me think we were going to see Leia do some bad ass shit with a light saber. I was so down for that. Instead she Mary Poppinsed her way across the screen and was in a coma for most of the movie.
Having older people do action is always a challenge, check the scene where Liam Neeson is climbing over a fence and there's like 20 cuts before he makes it. But Star Wars is the kind of thing where that isn't much of an issue. Carrie Fisher could wave around a s stick and throw out her hand and with some CGI she's be deflecting blaster shots and throwing around Stormtroopers using the force.
Instead we don't see Leia with a lightsaber until RoS and it's CGI. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate them finally showing Leia with a lightsaber. I will always defend RoS because of this... and Palpatine blasting X-Wings with lightning bolts, because fuck it, it's Star Wars have some fun people.
Ok, we have so, so much established canon to work with, what parts of it can we focus on or interweave and tweak a bit to tell precisely the kind if story we want?
Yeah but you gotta consider what Star Wars is about at it's core: some kids going on an adventure to save the galaxy. A lot of the EU wouldn't work because the actors that portray the characters are too old to do those stories in the same way. Still they should've had Leia with a lightsaber and bring in Thrawn, who could have some younger underlings himself. And yeah Mara Jade could make an appearance too, but it wouldn't be a starring role. But at least have the older characters doing things to help and maybe have the good old "I'll deal with this" thing happen so the kids can get away.
TFA was the best of the three because Han Solo did stuff. Luke and Leia just didn't feel all that relevant in the other movies. I give RoS a pass because Luke Skywalker was dead in the story and Carrie Fisher was dead in real life. Not much could be done at that point. TLJ was where things needed to go down, but it just didn't.